January 09, 2014

Wine News (56)

Carole & Emmanuel Giboulot

An organic winegrower dragged to the court february 24th for refusing to spray his parcels
Emmanuel Giboulot, a biodynamic winegrower in Burgundy made the headlines (here Decanter) in the wine media a few weeks ago after he was notified by the French administration for refusing to use insecticides preventively to treat his vineyard against the cicadelle (scaphoideus titanus), an insect which is the vector of the flavescence dorée, a dangerous vine disease. I called Emmannuel on january 8th to have his last news and feelings about the issue.

He says that there was no documented case of flavescence dorée on his vineyard or in any vineyard in the vicinity but the administration had given orders (décrets) to the growers to spray their vineyards, and this in two contiguous départements, the Saône et Loire and the Côte d'Or.
The authorities, who visited 41 wineries in the Côte d'Or in mid-2013 found only one winery without proof of purchase of the insecticide, it was Emmannuel Giboulot's. He could have done like a few winegrowers, buy the product, keep the receipt and not use it in his vineyard and he wouldn't have had then any problem with the law enforcement, but he chose to be frank and show his colors, and when the administration guys showed up he said he didn't want to spray this insecticide. Even if certain products are organic-farming compliant, their use was also harmful to a whole range of beneficent organisms. He was initially summoned to the court in november, but couldn't come, then he was summoned again to present himself at the court on december 24th but his case was postponed until february 24. He risks a fine of 30 000 € and
a 6-month jail term for his refusal, which he justifies by the fact that the spraying is unnecessary (there was not a single case of flavescence dorée in the Côte D'Or in the spring of 2013) and would weaken the ecosystem of his vineyard without reason as no case of flavescence dorés has been observed in or near his parcels. The closest known case of flavescence dorée happened in Plottes (départyement of Saône-et-Loire) which is located 77 km from Beaune. Plus this is completely alien to the official posturing of the authorities to encourage a diminution of the insecticide sprayings. Emmannuel Giboulot received support in his ordeal from different groups like Biodivin, Renaissance des Appellations, Biodynamic farmers groups, but the issue is touchy because some groups reveive subsidies from the state or the regional administration and they had to be careful in their support.
Emmanuel Giboulot says that the spraying against cicadelles, the vector insect of the disease aims to limit the movements of this vector, but 75 % of the success of the fight against Flavescence dorée lies in the identification of the affected vines and the removal of those vines; then if a treatment is decided it has to be in an area in the immediate proximity of this vineyard. In the present case, he says, the SRAL, a state administration dealing with agriculture and forestry seems to be pushing for heavy-handed approach without a deep understanding and distance for handling the problem. Last year they ordered three compulsory sprayings in the 3 village areas around Plottes and this year they asked to the whole Saône-et-Loire département and the whole Côte d'Or to spray, even though this latter départementhadn't a single documented rcase of flavescence dorée.

Another thing is that the spraying effect is very limited, there should be 3 to be sure if you really wanted to "do the job"; Then these sprayings are decimating the Typhlodromus specy (or predatory mites) for example, which are keeping the biological balance in the vineyard and preventing pests from expanding. Emmannuel Giboulot says that the disease has less room and opportunity to move in an environment with diversity and multiple life. He says that he knows about wineries that had used the compulsory insecticide and as a result, were obliged to add two anti-acaricide sprayings because the natural predators had been largely erased and opened the door to harmful pests.
Read also this article [in French] about the collateral casualties caused by this treatment on the typhlodromus population.

Tracassier 2009 (Mouressipe)

I had bought this bottle a year or two ago and I loved it when I tasted it then, so when I saw the bottle in the wine fridge while looking for something to pop up that evening, I grabbed it. The wine was as exciting as it was when I bought it, awesome, beautiful and so easy to
drink. This guy (Alain Allier, pictured on left) must be the Eric Pfifferling of the Languedoc to make such wines, where is the secret ? I was trying to figure out while sipping even though I'm not a winemaker at all, but there are such differences between wines that you're tempted sometimes to visualize which vinification practice (or the lackthereof) may be behind the drinking feel. Here I'd say that the harvest has been cooled for a night and that the fermentation has been slow, he may also not have used certain part of the press juice, in particular the last part where undesired extraction can be found. But whatever he did for this wine (and I may be completely wrong in my assumptions, the result is here, so enjoyable and alive...

Some people wonder why uncorrected wines are having a larger following year after year, thinking it's a hype, but they certainly didn't try many wines like these, they wouldn't need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain why more and more wine amateurs are bored with mainstream wines.

With a bottle like this one it's love at first sight, you just haven't to theorize and utter elaborate tasting comments, and on a table with several other bottles there's a good chance it would be the first to be empty.

For the last occurence of the Beaujolais Nouveau ritual, we had a joyful reunion with a group of friends and I was proud and happy that the 3 most applauded wines that evening were the one I brought, a Beaujolais Villages Primeur 2013 by Karim Vionnet, the one Maryse brought, a Beaujolais Nouveau by Michel Guignier, that's for the Nouveau category, but the overall champion of all the wines we got that evening was the bottle brought by B. : a Morgon 2008 by Georges Descombes, a gorgeously savoury Beaujolais which was an eye opener for several people about what Beaujolais can yield. I had bought myself a couple of cases of his Morgon and may have one or two bottles left. On the Nouveau category I think that the Vionnet wine was the most accomplished and open. I had chosen Vionnet whom I don't know well but from whom I had a couple of nice glasses here and there.

Vulgar non-AOC apples with faulty skin

In a digression unrelated-and-at-the-same-time-related to our favorite wines, I wanted to say that B. and I are enojying all winter these scarred, ugly, wrong-sized and vulgar appellation-less apples that I picked in the Loire in autumn, eating them alternatively raw or cooked. They're free of chemicals and excellent but the French and European rules don't consider them fit for retail sales because of secondary parameters.
Here are a few lines (my translation) found on an adminitrative document dealing with the square "sanitary" requirements for fruits & vegetables. Yet another example of heavy-handed administrative regulations leading to exactly the opposite in terms of quality. Reading the whole document (in French) sheds
light on the obscure mindset of the bureaucracy employees who devised these labyrinthian rules. Here is the excerpt (my translation) :

3.1.1. Minimum requirements
for quality
Within the tolerance margin,
the products must be:
- Intact
- Healthy. Are excluded : products with rotting or deterioration such as to make them unfit for consumption,
- Clean, practically free of any visible foreign matter,
- Practically free from pests,
- Practically free from damage to the flesh caused by pests,
- Free of abnormal external moisture,
- Free of any smell or taste alien to the fruit/vegetable.
3.1.3. tolerance
There is a tolerance for up to 10% of products in each batch not meeting the minimum quality requirements in number or weight.
Within this tolerance, products affected by degradation are limited to 2% in total.
This tolerance does not apply, however, to produce affected by rotting or any other alteration that would make them unfit for consumption.

In short, we can't deny that the administration (French or European) deals samely and impartially with wines and with fruits or vegetables, we feel here the same devotion for apparence and squareness. Whatever their delightful content and their lack of residues, these apples are banned from retail because of their scars, skin defects and occasional worms. But every single pecking wound on these apples is more valuable than any pointless administration approval...

There were lots of apples this year, after a very poor volume in 2012. It's like if the trees wanted to catch up and make twice more apples as a revenge. They even made some sort of green harvest of their own, letting hundreds of tiny green apples drop on the ground in june or july (I don't remember exactly), as if they had second thoughts and realized they had really planned too many apples. There were still too many in october and each was thus smaller than average.

Frederic Cossard & Laure de Peyerimhoff

This was at a Burgundy-Beaujolais tasting a few weeks ago (at Caves Augé again...). The outside temperature was cold (unlike now when it's close to 15 ° C in Paris) and the wines were cold, it was not always easy to feel the wines, but this one seemed to stand out
without any regard to the unforgiving temperature conditions, it was the cuvée Damodes made by Frédéric Cossard (Domaine de Chassorney). The wine
was joyful and gently fruity and I asked Frederic about this cuvée : it is made since 2010. He says that when he lost the Clos des Argillières he chose to set up a négoce to work from purchased grapes and this vineyard of Damodes was among the one he contracted with. He says that actually when you look at this vineyard it should be in Premier Cru : the top of the slope is in Premier Cru but the owner of this plot was not in good terms with the vignerons who decided of the classification in the mid 1940s', so his parcel was not included. The Damodes vineyard is 85 to 90 years old and is planted on Riparia rootstock, it is montée en plants fins, meaning it is planted on frail types of vines that have low yields, and Frederic Cossard says that even on a minor vintage it makes good, refined wines. The total volume for this cuvée is 5 casks or 1500 bottles. Price for a bottle at Caves Augé : about 60 €.
In Cotes de Nuits, Frederic says, they have other nice vineyards, like Vosne Romanée les Champs Perdrix, it's just over La Tâche (2 meters above) and the vineyard is farmed organic, plowed with a horse; he works also with a vineyard on Morey Saint Denis Premier Cru les Monts Luisants, just above the Clos de la Roche, a wonderful w=vineyard and thin vines.
Fred adds that some of his prices are getting high compared to the prices he used to have with vineyards in Saint Romain but the prices he has to pay to the owners for 350 kg of grapes can be 15 000 € and that's why some bottles tend to cost more than what his followers used to pay.

If you're looking for a more affordable treat, try to find the cuvée Gigi by Georges Descombes (pic on right), another beautiful Beaujolais like this winemaker had us hooked to.

A Great Valette

I had begun this tasting with the whites of Domaine Valette, and I can't but say again that this winemakers stands out. I haven't taken notes alas but remember that every bottle I came across was another pleasure. One thing I like in these street tastings is that the pours are generous and you don't just coldly analyze the aromatic qualities of the wines but you really experience them in your system and man, these wine send you a very positive message that dwarf any respectable tasting notes.

Butter without additives

Can you believe that an ordinary packet of butter found in a supermarket can display a couple of words on its wrapping that very few wineries could put on their wine labels : NO ADDITIVES. This again shows the growing gap between what we see more and more in food, more transparency, and the stubbornly-opaque communication of most wineries regarding their practices and their use of additives in ther winemaking. I think that much of the anger of mainstream wineries or their advocates against natural wines comes from the realization that they'd loose all credibility if their winemaking corrections were to be publicized, and the more consumers or journalists speak about natural winemaking, the higher the risk that their own use of additives and corrections comes to light one way or another...

There's another aspect on this issue : the price. You can of course find butter made without additives in an artisan dairy shop or even a good charcuterie shop, but here I found in a French supermarket a very basic butter with the words sans additifs, and at the very basic price of 1,3 € for the 250-gram pack. I really think that this is worth our attention, we're told that for a product without additives there's no way around, we are to pay the distorted prices that we see in these organic food stores. But if such a very well-priced butter-without-additives can now be found in a basic supermarket and in the regular dairy-products aisle (not the fancy organic one targetting the health-conscious baby boomers), there's really hope that better food products are just around the corner for the ordinary consumer. This butter may not be organic yet, but being guaranteed without additives is already a big leap...

Trying to sell me herbicide

Forget Monsanto, the Chinese are coming with their discount herbicides....
I've received recently this spam from China, with the usual RE: as header to compell you to read : I fell in the trap and read the email, finding there an inspiring fellow, pretending to be first-named Jessica, who said she/he was working for a company making weedkillers and offered to sell me herbicides at good price, saying that she/he found on the Internet that I was looking for these products... Simply put, the Chinese marketing teams look on google for websites with content about herbicide and assume without finetuning their data that the webpages are managed by industrial farms or someone interested one way or another in herbicides. I thank them for this mistake because it helps me tell you about this nascent herbicide supplier on a humorous manner...
I wrote back asking "Jessica" what types of herbicides they had in store, and in a swift reply I was told that they had "many other herbicide,glyphosate 360g/l, glyphosate 450g/l and Chlorsulfuron ,Propanil ,Isoproturon ....
If you need any kind of goods in this filed, just email us."

I asked again, feigning interest for Atrazine, a forbidden herbicide here, and I got this answer :

Dear Bert,

Thanks for your email.
Atrazine 97% FOB Price USD 3300/MT
Packing: 25kg/bag 20kg/bag 200l/drum or as your need
Delivery time:within 2 weeks after receive your deposit
Payment: 50% T/T in advance as the deposit, the balance against copy of B/L
And if you need other stand,please don't hesitate to contact us again.

Really bad news for Michael Moore : the company that he loves to hate could be out of business soon...

++++++++++++++++++++++++

In a separate mail (actually a comment on this story), I got this from Greece :
Dear Sir
We are from Greece and we are interesting
for enzyms because we want to restart the
fermantation to wine that stops. We would like to
send us a catalog with all your products and if it's
posible to sent them in Greece.
Best Regards
Konstantinos XXXXX

I'm slowly considering to become a broker in chemicals and additives, there seems to be plenty of manufacturers out there who are yearning for customers, and winemakers/growers who want more magic powders but don't know where to ask...

A nice 11-year-old Chinon

Okay, the wine looks a bit less luminous and it helped to have a spotlight in the background, but still, this Chinon les Roches 2002 had a vibrant color for its age. While probably over its best years, it offered an intensely enjoyable drink with lots of fruit and velvety substance. This is one of my happy picks from the wine fridge. There were sediments along a side of the bottle and I'm sure that they helped the wine go through all these years unscathed.
We opened the bottle last october (2012), I'm looking forward to the last couple of bottles I have from this vintage and producer.

A nice Crémant de Loire

As you may know, the sales of Champagne have been down in France for the 2nd year in a row, in good part because of the gloomy economic situation here, but part of the motives behind this drop may be that consumers are slowly switching to other bubblies, not the cheap Spanish or Italian rivals like the linked article suggests but rather the more-and-more-popular méthodes traditionelles and crémants, the strict requirements for their vinification making them very good alternatives. You have very nice crémants from Alsace, Burgundy and the Loire for example, and with prices often around 8 € or
below (in Touraine it is usually around 5 €
at the winery), the consumers tend to switch to these very honorable bubblies in spite of their more modest origins. Virtually every domaine in the Loire, in Alsace and in Burgundy makes a Crémant and there is room for finding one at your taste.

I was invited recently at an event around several bubbly wines made by Alliance Loire, a group of 8 coopératives of the Loire region. The tasting which took place under the chief enologist of Alliance Loire narrowed around their own brand De Chanceny where you find both crémants de Loire and a sparkling Vouvray, Vouvray Brut Excellence. Even coops can do a good job with sparklings, and the first wine we had (pictured above) was indeed very pleasant. Here is a bubbly that sells for only 7,6 € and had eveything gentle you ask for an apéritif with bubbles, the smooth side of the bubbles and an undeniable aromatic character. The wine is made with Chenin Blanc (65 ), Chardonnay (20 %) and Cabernet Franc (15 %), all hand picked and fermented at low temperature (18 ° C or 64,4 F). The bottles are put laying down sur lattes for 18 to 24 months.

We were offered a verticale of the Vouvray Brut Excellence after having tasted the last available vintage, the 2011 : We had the 2010, the 2009, the 2007, the 2002 and the 2000. I don't remember which of the last two because I didn't take note, but one of the old vintages was particularly enjoyable (let's assume it was the 2002).
The fact sheet for the Vouvray Brut Excellence De Chanceny says that it's 100 % Chenin, softr-pressed and fermented at low temperature with 24 months sur lattes before disgorgement. Incidently I liked the wine because it was not overtly "Brut", sometimes you like the result of the dosage... The retail price for this Vouvray sparkling is 8,5 € (here for example).
We had an unexpected bonus with an even older Vouvray bubbly by this same coop, a 1983 (pictured left). Interesting curiosity but I think that the last vintages were better made.
This tasting took place in a restaurant worth a visit, La Cevicheria where two young women prepare marinated fish like in Peru. I'm not an expert on this food which I discovered here but I loved it.

A great Pineau D'Aunis sparkling

I discovered this very nice bubbly from the Loire in a small épicerie near place Gambetta in Paris, La Campagne à Paris (210 rue des Pyrénées in the 20th). There's a caviste side in this shop and from what I saw there the guy has a good nose to select fine wines and small cuvées.
Patrice Colin who made this sparkling rosé wine is known along Emile Hérédia as a king of pineau d'aunis in the Coteaux du Vendômois, a small sub-region of the Loire, and the bottle costing 8,9 € I thought I shouldn't miss it.
The wine is barely rosé, that why maybe the label says "perles grises" (gray pearls). The wine is unlike Champagne left fermenting alone in the bottle, without dosage, it has this classy spicy touch of pineau d'aunis, but in a very subtle manner, the skin and tannins having not had the time to imprint their full character. Patrice Colin sells this cuvée for 7,8 € tax included at the winery or through Internet, quite a good deal.

A New World wine with Comté cheese

I opened recently a bottle from the Pelter winery in the Golan (Israel), this was a cabernet sauvignon-sirah 2006, the wine was hinting at the hot climate of this high plateau (although with an altitude of 1000 m or
3300 ft If I remember) along the Syrian border.
Very intense mouth feel with spicy aromas, the
tannins were well integrated and refined, this was overall a well-mastered and powerful wine, and I could have kept this bottle many more years in the wine fridge and still enjoy it at a later stage. Taken by itself, the wine was for me closer to a New-World wine with an extraction and alcohol level higher than what I'm used to, but unexpectedly when sipped while eating Comté cheese, there was a nice exchange between the Comté's texture and the thin tannins of the wine.
Website of the Pelter winery

Speaking of Israel, archaeologists there ave unearthed recently near Nahariya (northern Israel) a 3700-year-old cellar dating from the Canaanite era, the place was packed with amphorae where scientists found wine residues. The analysis of the sediments sheds light on the type of wines stored there, they were definitely for high-end consumers and not the daily booze of the common man. Some of the jars contained red wine, others possibly white wine. An analysis of the sediments revealed that the wine also contained nuts, dried fruits, herbs and spices and other ingredients. The diggings and analysis are still underway and we should wait until 2015 to learn the full story.

The mystery behind terroir unveiled

Recent discoveries by researchers at UC Davis in California seem to establish that a common population of microbes can be found in vineyards situated in the same region, which could be understood as a proof that terroir is a reality and can be measured. If confirmed, this is a pivotal moment in the understanding of what makes wines different depending of the region and parcels.

Another important aspect of the research is that it states that these bacteria and fungi that make the wines of a region stand together grow on the skin of the grapes. This means that whatever you spray on your grapes and vineyard environment impacts these organisms. This sounds very much like what the biodynamic growers have been saying for years and it could explain why their wines stand out, these bacteria and fungi having been given free rein to live their micro lives, and they did their job and alchemy on the grapes and later on the juice.

Yet another lesson here is to appreciate the role of microbes, fungi and bacteria which the hygienists and French/European technocrats want us to consider as ennemies, even for artisan food. What is true for wine is true for cheese too and I can't but point again to a recent research [excerpt in French] by the French research body INRA where you learn from scientists not usually associated to traditional-farming apologists that raw-milk cheeses are host to a big microbian population that in fact renders the cheeses safer against listeria and other pathogens. But in spite of this scientific discovery the same mindless rules keep apply to raw-milk cheese farms, with sterilized lab rooms and other mind-boggling requirements that hamper the proper development of this rich microbian population.

A shopper at Marks & Spencer (Photo: Kumar Sriskandan/Alamy)

Could be titled like, the U.K. on the fast lane to sharia compliancy...
Marks & Spencer has recently considered that muslim clerks could be allowed to refuse to serve shoppers buying alcohol and pork in the name of their own beliefs. Bigotry pays and step by step you will find more of such big companies ready to accomodate fanatics masquerading as devoutees, and this, in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism. This shouldn't stop with alcohol and pork of course, soon the usual suspects will demand to be allowed to refuse service for any product having to do with Israel, then female shoppers whose nice neck or sexy legs "offend" the bigots will be asked to find another cashier : "it's easy ma'am, you see over there, it's the only one without a headscarf".... I also imagine the brainstorming debate among Marks & Spencer excecutives in a couple of years : are bagels jewish enough to include them among the no-touch allowance for muslim clerks ?...
Responding to the uproar that ensued, the M&S spokesman at first had just the usual bland PC newspeak : “M&S promotes an environment free from discrimination and so, where specific requests are made, we will always make reasonable adjustments to accommodate them, whilst ensuring high levels of customer service.”.

Being ensured high levels of customer service means in my mind going shop elsewhere.
It was a matter of days before Marks & Spencer backtracked on this hot issue, feeling the heat from thousands of loyal customers who were indeed ready to shop elsewhere and do the word of mouth for others to do the same. It's both reassuring and worrying, here is a company that was ready to put in place some sort of Apartheid service instigated by supremacists, they sure backpedaled but this initial bowing to bigotry makes you doubt durably of the company.

Comments

Wow, that Emmanuel Giboulot story is outrageous. You have to imagine there is some real crime and corruption going on that the French government could be concerning themselves with instead of picking on committed and responsible winemakers...